N.Y. Legislature Hits Cartoon Depths
GOP and Dems hold dueling legislative sesssions in the same room.
June 24, 2009— -- The political antics in New York's capital of Albany have long made the state government the butt of jokes, but the laughter died away this week and was replaced with a slackjawed stare of disbelief as the political brawling reached cartoonish depths.
A fierce struggle between Republicans and Democrats for control of the state Senate was plunged into farce when the two parties held dueling legislative sessions, shouting at times to drown out the other side, under the Senate's ornate roof.
"People are describing this as a circus. But that is an insult to the circus," said Blair Horner, of the New York State Public Interest Research Group. "This is a comedy of errors -- without the comedy."
Two groups of senators talked and shouted over one another as the parallel Senates conducted business simultaneously. There were two Senate presidents, two sets of bills being voted on, even the hammering of competing gavels. Tempers repeatedly flared, and on more than one occasion senators had to step between their bickering colleagues.
"We have gone beyond embarrassing," said Barbara Bartoletti, the legislative director of the League of Women Voters. "All we are lacking is someone throwing shoes."
Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, was more blunt. He said the Senate's behavior "disgusts me."
That anyone could be shocked or embarassed by anything in the state capital in Albany anymore is saying something.
Albany in general and the New York Legislature in particular have long been known as places where dysfunction rules and good ideas go to die.
This is, after all, the state where a governor (Eliot Spitzer) resigned for cavorting with a prostitute, and a state comptroller (Alan Hevesi), the official in charge of watching the people's money, had to quit for using state employees to chauffer his wife. Since then, Hevesi's top adviser has been ensnared in a blossoming pension fund scandal.
If legislators have become skilled at anything, it's the perp walk. At least a dozen have been indicted or imprisoned on assorted corruption charges in the last five years.
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